Read Write Inc Set 2 Sounds

There are twelve Read Write Inc Set 2 sounds: ay, ee, igh, ow as in blow, oo as in zoo, oo as in look, ar, or, air, ir, ou as in out, and oy. They come after the whole of Set 1 and they are the point at which your child stops reading only short, blunt words and starts reading words that sound like the words they actually say. If your child has just started bringing home Green or Purple storybooks, this is the set they are working on.

What exactly are the Set 2 sounds?

Twelve sounds, each written with two or three letters. Here they are with a word you can use to check your own pronunciation before you try to help.

Every one of these is a special friend, which is the Read Write Inc name for two or three letters making a single sound. Your child already met seven special friends in Set 1: sh, th, ch, qu, ng, nk and ck. Set 2 is more of the same idea, applied to vowel sounds.

What has my child already learned before Set 2?

All of Set 1, which is twenty five single letter sounds taught in this order: m a s d t i n p g o c k u b f e l h r j v y w z x. On top of those come the seven Set 1 special friends. So by the time Set 2 starts, your child has thirty two sounds and can already read a great many short words.

That matters when you are helping, because it tells you what is fair to expect. If your child hesitates on a Set 1 sound in the middle of a Set 2 word, the problem is not the new sound at all and drilling ay will not touch it. Go back and check the old ones quietly, without making an event of it.

Why are there two oo sounds?

Because the same two letters do two different jobs in English, and pretending otherwise would leave a child stuck the first time they met book. One is the long sound in zoo. The other is the short sound in look. In class they are usually taught with different actions or phrases so children can hold them apart.

This is the first time most children meet the idea that one spelling can say more than one sound, and it is a genuinely big idea. It is also the reason a child who has read oo correctly for a fortnight can suddenly read good as "goooood". They are not going backwards. They are choosing between two options and they picked the wrong one. Say "try the other oo" and let them fix it themselves.

How long does Set 2 take?

Longer than parents expect, and there is no fixed schedule. Schools teach in groups of children at roughly the same point and move those groups on when the sounds are secure, not when the calendar says so. Twelve sounds is not twelve lessons, because each one has to be recognised instantly in the middle of a word before it counts as learned.

What you can watch for at home is not how many sounds your child can name on a flashcard but whether they can read a word containing one without a pause. Naming air on a card and reading chair smoothly are two different skills, and the second is the one that matters.

Which storybooks use Set 2?

Green and Purple. The Read Write Inc storybook colour order runs Sound Blending Books, Red Ditty, Green, Purple, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Blue and then Grey. Green and Purple are built on Set 2 sounds. Pink, Orange and Yellow move on to Set 3, and Blue and Grey draw on all three sets.

So if a Green book has arrived in the book bag, Set 2 has started. If you are seeing Pink, your child is into Set 3 and Set 2 is behind them. It is a more reliable signal than anything your child reports about which group they are in.

Colours are not year groups and they are not a ranking, whatever the playground conversation suggests. They describe which sounds a book is built from, nothing more. A child on Green in the spring of Reception and a child on Green in the autumn of Year 1 are reading the same phonic content, and both of them are being given books that fit.

Why does the book from school look too easy?

Because it is a different book from the one your child read in school, deliberately built to be easier going. The Storybook is read with the group across the week. The Book Bag Book that comes home is a separate story using the same phonic content and the same green words. It is the most common source of parent confusion in the whole scheme.

By the time that book reaches your kitchen table, your child has met those words several times already. It is meant to be easy. It is practice, not a test, and a child romping through it is the system working exactly as designed. Our guide to Read Write Inc books at home goes into this properly.

How do I help with Set 2 at home?

The habit that makes the biggest difference is spotting the special friends before sounding out. Ask "any special friends?" and let your child put a finger under the ay in play. A child who reads play as "p, l, a, y" has four sounds where there are three and the word will not assemble.

Then wait. Five seconds of silence is the rule, and it is harder than it looks. Most children get there at about four if nobody speaks. If the five seconds run out, give the sounds rather than the word, so "p-l-ay" and not "play". That hands them the win instead of taking it.

Special friends first, then sound out, then wait five seconds. Almost everything else is detail.

Red words are the exceptions that cannot be Fred Talked, and children are taught to stop and think rather than sound them out. At home the move is simpler still: tell your child the word and carry on. Fighting over a red word costs you the rest of the book and most of your child's willingness to open the next one.

Green words, by contrast, are decodable with the sounds your child has been taught, and those are the ones worth being patient with. The distinction is worth explaining to your child out loud, because knowing which kind of word they are looking at removes a lot of unnecessary effort.

My child keeps mixing up ow and ou. Is that normal?

Completely normal, and there is a real reason for it. In Set 2 the ow your child learns is the one in blow and the ou is the one in out. But ow also spells the sound in brown, and that version does not arrive until Set 3. So for a while your child has one ow and the world has two.

The fix is not more drilling. It is telling them the truth: this one has a second job and you will meet it later. Children handle that better than adults expect, and it stops them concluding that they have got it wrong.

What is the difference between Set 2 and Set 3?

Set 3 is bigger and it adds the split digraphs. It contains seventeen sounds: ea, oi, a-e, i-e, o-e, u-e, aw, are, ur, er, ow as in brown, ai, oa, ew, ire, ear and ure. You will notice some overlap in sound with Set 2, which is the point. Set 3 is largely about alternative ways of writing sounds your child already knows.

So ay in Set 2 and ai in Set 3 make the same sound with different spellings. That shift, from learning new sounds to learning new spellings, is what most of Year 1 is about across every scheme. Our overview of phonics books for Year 1 covers where that leaves your child's reading books.

What if my child seems stuck on Set 2?

First, check what stuck actually looks like. If they are stopping on more than about one word in ten, the book is too hard for them right now and the honest thing is to say so to the teacher. If they are getting the words but slowly, that is not stuck, that is normal, and the cure is more easy reading rather than harder books.

Second, check the sounds coming out of your own mouth. Say ar and or cleanly, without an "uh" on the end. Blending fails far more often because of extra noise in the sounds than because of anything to do with the child.

Third, if a fortnight of short daily reading changes nothing, raise it with the teacher. Describe what you see rather than what you fear: "she stops on most words with a special friend in them" is something a teacher can act on today.

Where to go next

If the word decodable keeps appearing in letters home and nobody has explained it, start with what decodable books actually are. There is also parent material on Oxford Owl, which publishes Read Write Inc.

Lindo Phonics is not connected to Read Write Inc and is not endorsed by them. We match the published progression so a story only uses sounds your child has already been taught.